Tag Archives: nature

2018 Photography and Art in Review, Articles on travel, birds, flowers, gardening, gardens, nature, nature photos, plants

Texas Gardening Part 3: The Spectacle of the Candlestick Plant: Senna Alata

March 13, 2018 artiststevel

Why I Grow Candlestick Plants

Besides my love of nature, I am an artist and the four winners in Texas have definitely got a lot of opportunities for art and photography. The Candlestick Plant is not only beautiful, it is a winner in the Texas Garden. It is important for the sulphur and similar butterflies to feed their young.

The are also easily grown from seed and will grow with very little attention. They love the heat.

Candlestick Plant: A winner in the Texas Garden

Spectacle of – Senna Alata: This plant has a strange and dramatic flower and is a host plant for several sulphur butterflies. You will need to give it some room because it grows out of its boundaries but the display is stunning. No questioning why they call it a candlestick plant as the blooms look like tall yellow candlesticks.

Another aspect of this plant is that it’s so easy to grow, very little watering and I’ve never fertilized any of my plants. After the flowers are exhausted, the seeds are very abundant. You will see many seedlings the next season or two.

Spectacle of Candlestick Plants - Sulphur Caterpillar — Spectacle of Candlestick Plants – Sulphur Caterpillar

Wildlife Gardening Importance

This is the visitor you can expect, the caterpillar of the cloudless sulphur. Every year I get a few of them and I’ve had this plant in my garden every year for probably the last ten years.

Another senna that looks much like the candlestick plant is the Popcorn Senna (Cassia didymobotrya). This plant also attracts the sulphur butterflies and looks like a paler version of the candlestick plant but it also smells like its name suggests.

Spectacle of Candlestick Plants - Sulphur Caterpillar and buds — Spectacle of Candlestick Plants – Sulphur Caterpillar and buds

Makes great photographs.

Candlestick plants love the heat and I don’t think I have ever watered them. In the evening they close up their large mimosa like leaves and the whole plant looks like its praying. I will always have them in my garden and am in the process of selling their seeds as well.

The whole reason I started wildlife gardening was to attract wildlife. I have been able to photograph the cloudless sulphurs, clouded sulfurs and several cabbage whites that come for the nasturtium and lay their eggs on siennas as well. My work has been rewarded and I love to be able to photograph and paint the plants and butterflies as well.

For More Photography From the Garden

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Nature photography – Blackland Prairie Raptor Center birds of prey

March 3, 2018 artiststevel

Every visit to the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center in Lucas, Texas is a chance to learn more about raptors and the Blackland Prairie. What always strikes me is the fact that young children already know about terms like diurnal and nocturnal and are interested in learning more about the birds.

It makes me hopeful for the future that the youth is already interested and engaged in wildlife preservation. Families walk the prairie with naturalists and are taught the significance of the Blackland Prairie and why it needs to be preserved.

You learn about each bird and their stories and you see how each has their own personality. Today was a particularly beautiful sunny spring day and I can’t think of a better place to spend an afternoon.

If you get a chance, you need to visit on the first Saturday of each month and if you can volunteer, I’m sure they could use an extra set of hands.

Unfortunately a common theme is human imprinting. People mean well but most don’t know how to take care of wildlife and usually the consequences are not good for the bird.

If you find an injured bird, leave it to the experts. If you are in doubt leave the bird where it is and allow nature to take care of itself.

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Isolated Fruit as Art

February 21, 2018 artiststevel

Isolated Fruit = I photographed these pieces of fruit because I liked how they brought color to a gray winter window sill. To see ordinary fruit without the context of a kitchen shows how beautiful the colors and textures of each fruit can be outside its’ normal context.

My latest series of projects have been finding rich colors and textures from ordinary objects. When viewed in a different light and in a unique setting, even ordinary fruit takes on a new and more attractive presence.

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Wildlife Gardens in Texas: Milkweed plants for Monarchs

February 15, 2018 artiststevel

This is the first post in a series on Wildlife gardening in Texas.

Mexican Milkweed available at your local gardens

Milkweed plants for Monarch – I have always been a lover of nature and wildlife gardening seemed
a natural connection to my writing, photography and painting. If you
build a wildlife friendly garden, they will find you.

My garden has been the subject matter for many photography posts, art and writing. There are several species of plants you need to have
in your garden and the fact that they are native will make your garden almost care-free.

Monarch on Maximillian Sunflower

You need to feed the adult birds, allow spaces for birds to
hunt for food without chemicals, raise their families and drink.
You need to feed the caterpillar young and have a place for the adults to feed on nectar, again no chemicals.

The first plant you need to have to help the monarch butterfly
population rebound is milkweed. There are all different species but try to stick with the native species.

Mexican Milkweed

Another plant that is available more than the native species is mexican milkweed, also known as blood flower. It’s a tall plant that can reseed and it feeds the young of the monarch.

Frostweed

For the adults, they love Frostweed and Zinnias. Both of these plants will attract them to your garden and you will not need to do much to keep these plants wild. Zinnias actually will grow well from seed and frostweed will reseed itself and feed many other species of nectar loving butterflies.

Zinnias and Sunflowers

Next post will be on Passionvine, what they attract and their ease to grow. Stay tuned. The next post will be next week at this time.

Passionvine

Build it and they will come

For more photos of garden https://artbygordon.com/?page_id=475

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Fruits of Labor

February 3, 2018 artiststevel

Fruits of Labor – I set up fruit for a still life and it’s been sitting on a table for the last week and nothing has happened. There is a distinct difference between being inspired and just not shooting. After a bit of a break and getting back to being present in the moment, See Wichita post, suddenly the images made themselves known.

It is seeing the way light paints objects that drive my creative response. It’s how the background blends and fades into varying colors that are ethereal and muted. I felt like these images were what I was searching for, why I went and bought blood oranges and pomegranate.

Suddenly with a bit of creative magic, the mundane suddenly shows itself and there is a brief moment where the artist finds the beauty and excitement in the everyday.

As quickly as I set up one shot, another quality of light made it known and suddenly one shot turns into multiple images. I am planning on adding these images to the artwork for home decor, just abstract enough to be interesting and yet I hope there is a sense of place in the images. Please feel free to let me know what you think and as always, thank you.

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Naturally Graphic available at Fine Art America

January 27, 2018 artiststevel

Naturally Graphic – Images are available on Fine Art America. Working on adding to a large inventory of abstract nature images that will be available soon.

Milkweed plant abstract print available on Fine Art America

Red Photinia Abstract print available on Fine Art America

Autumn Pond abstract available on Fine Art America

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A Weekday at the Zoo: Alone with a Camera, a Different Perspective

January 27, 2018 artiststevel

A Cheetah watches the spectators, I loved the depth in its eyes.

A Weekday at the Zoo – I have wonderful memories of zoos growing up. My dad had a passion for travel and zoos were one our families’ favorite destinations. My brother and I have since carried on that passion
for travel with our families.

A female lion watches intently at the guests in a coffee shop at the Dallas Zoo.

A matriarch chimp takes a moment from grooming to view its surroundings.

Caverns, aquariums and zoos are some of our favorite places for my son and I to explore and we have magnets to remember each one.

We have been to the Dallas zoo many times but it’s a different experience when you go alone. Even as my son got older, he would have specific animals he was interested in, usually he would antagonize the monkeys.

At the Dallas Zoo, a giraffe is alert for food, they have a place where you can feed them specific leaves they sell.

The experience was usually fast-paced but today I went alone. Even though I missed his company, it was a unique feeling being alone.

I spent the first thirty minutes watching the gorillas. I talked to the zookeeper and learned about each gorilla by name and she told me about the chimps.

I close-up of a Komodo Dragon, he was as curious about me as I was of him.

When you’re alone you get to stop, you have no agenda, only getting photographs of specific animals. I was able to enjoy each animal in a relax unhurried pace.

This isn’t something you see everyday. A bushmaster has a guest for dinner.

I spent much time in the reptile house and because it was during
the week, it was uncrowded. I got to listen to the zoo keepers information about the elephants and I I learned not just more about each animal but about the zoo and what they were doing to protect certain species.

A Green Mamba looks for the zookeeper to feed them.

There are so many more zoos I need to visit, across the country
and across the sea, so many more animals to enjoy. It is the child in me that loves to see animals and though I would prefer to see them in their natural habitat, I am glad zoos are a beacon for society to see that these amazing animals are worth saving.

A great African Elephant, I liked the texture of the trunk.

These are portraits from the animals at the Dallas Zoo. I hope you enjoy and will seek out a zoo near you.

A gorilla, I sat and watched him for a while, he was thoughtful and relaxed. I loved the feeling in its’ eyes.

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Abstractions of Nature – Contemporary Art for Home and Office

January 21, 2018 artiststevel

Artbygordon abstractions of nature become art for home and office: Naturally Graphic

Abstractions of Nature – I love the patterns in nature. As an artist, finding a unique perspective that can show a viewer something they might not have seen before is a large part of my artistic intent.

I have always painted landscapes and seascapes but I could never perfect what is already real. I am competing with the greatest artist of them all: God. All I can hope for is to show the viewer an aspect of that image that moved me and perhaps move the viewer with the same or varied feeling.

As I have been photographing more regularly, I have found the need to see deeper than just the landscape. Especially when the light does not cooperate with the subject or doesn’t show up at all.

I learned to isolate parts of nature when my desire to photograph didn’t lend itself to the light of the day. On a gray winter day, when there is nothing but flat, bland light and no objects are discernible by any effective modeling, I have discovered a new way of seeing the landscape.

I started seeing how images were painted by stray bits of light. Suddenly instead of a bland landscape, I was able to find just a piece of that landscape that could be a graphic object. I don’t even care if the final image is discernible, it is more the aspect of its abstract nature that intrigues me.

modern interior room with a beautiful furniture

I have started gathering autumn leaves, green leaves and patterns in water, in the past I would have struggled to find something in abstract but now the image jumps out at me. It’s a muscle and to strengthen this way of seeing the landscape has changed my whole outlook on contemporary art.

I believe that bringing nature into the house can evoke a calm center as well as a conversation piece for visitors. I like how without representing a specific subject, the image evokes something without trying too hard to be abstract or artsy. I have found my way to the abstract and contemporary subject.

Interiors are from Adobe Stock-Photographic art Artbygordon

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The Prairie in Blue Ridge

January 17, 2018 artiststevel

Parkhill Prairie – I got lost in the long flowing stalks of bluestem grasses, the great blue sky looming above where hawks dance in slow spirals. I sat on the cold, moist ground and listened to what it might have been like when bison and Indians roamed the backland prairie.

The clouds drifted with a calm indifference, the wind breathed and than exhaled followed by a ritual silence. Meadowlarks flew in patterns from fences and crows called out breaking the stillness, it is like going back in time.

I guess the fact that the winter chill that settled in my spine and slapped my exposed skin with pins and needles would be a good incentive not to go to the prairie. I assume that’s why both times I’ve gone there has been no one there but I consider it my oasis of silence.

I am comfortable sitting on the cold ground. My breath is still, my senses charged with the sounds as I try not to miss anything. I can hear cattle in the background and even a truck in the far distance but for the most part all is consumed with the rush of the wind through the grasses.

All that moves is the grasses, swaying back and forth as if haunted and the clouds marching passively across the plane, I am in awe of the silence and calm.

I have been dwarfed by mountains, the ocean but never by a huge open field. I have images of our history and it’s inhabitants that made a life out here and imagine the distant cows that cry out now were probably the sounds of wagon trains and troops of coyotes, maybe even the bison.

The coyotes are still here, I see their tracks and scat but the bison are long gone. There hawks of all kinds, the red tail, the kestrels and the prairie falcon, their mood is pensive with a mission. They rise and fall in the golden field as it should be.

I learned about this place from a trail guide at the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center and I have been back twice. Yet another great place I learned about from the Blackland Prairie Raptor center, great people and wonderful birds with lots of knowledge, if you haven’t gotten a chance to go on the first Saturday of the month, I would highly suggest going.

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Photographing Raptors – Blackland Prairie Raptor Center:

January 7, 2018 artiststevel

Barred Owl from the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center Photo by Artbygordon

Photographing Raptors – Protecting wildlife starts with saving habitat, maintaining native plants and fauna and protecting animals that have become injured or can not compete in their natural world. These animals become ambassadors to show our future stewards of the environment why they are so important and what makes them special.

Barn Owl from the Blackland Prairie Nature Center photo by artbygordon

Blackland Prairie Raptor Center is doing all of these important aspects of wildlife preservation. I visited their first Saturday of the month, it’s the only time they’re open to the public and they show the birds that pass through their center.

They keep the birds as wild as they can be, even the imprinted birds that haven’t learned to live in the wild are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. It is quite an impressive operation and much of what I have learned about the Blackland Prairie is from talking with the naturalists there.

They take the time to show you each bird they have and explain their unique situations. I was impressed with how much the children knew about the birds and the difference between nocturnal and diurnal.

Preregrine Falcon from the Blackland Prairie Nature Center photo by artbygordon

Every time I go to the center I learn something I didn’t know. Here is a list of some more things I’ve learned from my visit today.

1. A flock of Kites is a kettle. The mississippi kite is expanding its range southward. With age comes the more grey plumage and it feeds on mostly insects.

2. I’ve never heard a barn owl hiss up close. They also shriek and it can be quite piercing to the ear.

3. The tuffs of feathers on the head of the owls break up their round shape and make them harder to see in the wild.

4. A barn owls ears are so intense they can hear a heartbeat and they can actually attack a mouse under the snow without even seeing them.

Screech Owl from the Blackland Prairie Nature Center photo by artbygordon

5. Owls have tubular eyes that are more fixed than other animals and therefore they need to swivel their heads to see.

After the bird show we took a hike on the trails and we learned about blue stem grasses, native grass and invasive non-native species. I learned about another place I had never heard of before today and I very much enjoyed my visit, the park is the Parkhill Prairie near Blue Ridge and it was an amazing visit where I saw hawks and vultures flying in their environment.